Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

"Vast ex­pen­di­ture on crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and re­pres­sive mea­sures di­rect­ed at pro­duc­ers, traf­fick­ers and con­sumers of il­le­gal drugs have clear­ly failed to ef­fec­tive­ly cur­tail sup­ply or con­sump­tion. Ap­par­ent vic­to­ries in elim­i­nat­ing one source or traf­fick­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion are negat­ed al­most in­stant­ly by the emer­gence of oth­er sources and traf­fick­ers"-Re­port on the Glob­al Com­mis­sion on Drug Pol­i­cy, 2011.

Now this com­mis­sion had some big names in­clud­ing Kofi Anan, for­mer Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions; Ce­sar Gaviria, for­mer Pres­i­dent of Colom­bia; As­ma Ja­hangir, hu­man rights ac­tivists, for­mer UN spe­cial rap­por­teur on ar­bi­trary, ex­tra­ju­di­cial and sum­ma­ry ex­e­cu­tion, Pak­istan; Richard Bran­son, en­tre­pre­neur, ad­vo­cate for so­cial cause, founder of the Vir­gin Group; George P Schultz, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State, USA.These per­son­al­i­ties have made stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions in their coun­tries and around the globe. They have shown a ca­pac­i­ty to try new strate­gies in or­der to solve a cri­sis, but this time they are wrong, dead wrong.The fol­low­ing state­ment from the re­port shows more sur­ren­der and less cre­ativ­i­ty:

"The glob­al war on drugs has failed, with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for in­di­vid­u­als and so­ci­eties around the world. Fifty years af­ter the ini­ti­a­tion of the UN Sin­gle Con­ven­tion on Nar­cot­ic Drugs, and 40 years af­ter Pres­i­dent Nixon launched the US Gov­ern­ment's war on drugs, fun­da­men­tal re­forms in na­tion­al and glob­al con­trol poli­cies are ur­gent­ly need­ed."Now comes the punch line de­vel­oped by the com­mis­sion's gu­rus: "End the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of peo­ple who use drugs but who do no harm to oth­ers."

Then this or­gan­i­sa­tion goes on to give what it thinks will be the pos­i­tive out­come of its rec­om­men­da­tions:

"En­cour­age ex­per­i­men­ta­tion by gov­ern­ments with mod­els of le­gal reg­u­la­tion of drugs to un­der­mine the pow­er of or­gan­ised crime and safe­guard the health and se­cu­ri­ty of their cit­i­zens."Of course, the re­port went on to state that it ap­plies "es­pe­cial­ly to cannabis, but we al­so en­cour­age oth­er ex­per­i­ments in de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and le­gal reg­u­la­tion."

Very sig­nif­i­cant is a re­port quot­ed by the com­mis­sion­ers which was pub­lished in the Lancet in 2007. A team of sci­en­tists at­tempt­ed to rank a range of psy­choac­tive drugs ac­cord­ing to the ac­tu­al and po­ten­tial harms they could cause to so­ci­ety.Now, the com­mis­sion­ers have ad­mit­ted that these are "crude as­sess­ments" and crude they re­al­ly are. But let us move on with their clas­si­fi­ca­tion of lev­els of harm caused by spe­cif­ic drugs. There are four groups: Most Dan­ger­ous, Mod­er­ate Risk, Low Risk, Not Sub­ject to In­ter­na­tion­al Con­trol.

In the Most Dan­ger­ous group, present clas­si­fi­ca­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al treaties in­clude cannabis, LSD, GHB and ec­sta­sy. How­ev­er the in­de­pen­dent ex­pert as­sess­ment of risk in­di­cates the op­po­site ac­cord­ing to the Lancet re­port. To­bac­co, ke­t­a­mine and al­co­hol are not sub­ject to in­ter­na­tion­al con­trol but the risks are re­port­ed to be more dan­ger­ous than cannabis, LSD etc.

Of course, one has to ad­mit that there are con­tra­dic­tions in how we ap­proach to­bac­co and al­co­hol and youth raise these ques­tions all the time. In fact, they claim that it is bla­tant hypocrisy to clas­si­fy a drug like "to­bac­co" as le­gal when it does so much harm.I could fill this ar­ti­cle with the neg­a­tive im­pact of to­bac­co in­clud­ing bron­chi­tis, em­phy­se­ma, dam­age to the heart and blood ves­sels, and a broad range of can­cers. It has been es­ti­mat­ed that over five mil­lion peo­ple die an­nu­al­ly as a re­sult of to­bac­co ad­dic­tion.

Since that Lancet re­port, re­search on mar­i­jua­na in Cana­da and Eng­land has pro­duced some dis­turb­ing re­sults, es­pe­cial­ly as they re­late to youth and psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders such as schiz­o­phre­nia. The re­searchers have very im­pres­sive cre­den­tials. Re­searchers such as Dr Mark Gold and Dr Daniel Amen have iden­ti­fied a ma­jor temp­ta­tion of com­men­ta­tors and those who be­lieve that the so­lu­tion to the drug prob­lem is de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion.

I re­peat, Dr Mark Gold has been recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as a drug abuse ex­pert. He has made this very po­tent state­ment: "As the per­cep­tion of a drug's dan­ger­ous­ness goes down, its use goes up."But the com­mis­sion's self-con­dem­na­tion can­not and must not be ig­nored. It has ad­mit­ted that it is us­ing crude as­sess­ments. Can we and should we use "crude as­sess­ments" to craft in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy? The an­swer must be a re­sound­ing no.

Let us pro­ceed to quote Dr Amen:

"I am tru­ly amazed by the non­cha­lant at­ti­tude our coun­try has to­ward mar­i­jua­na us­age. Even my home state of Cal­i­for­nia passed a law in 1996 le­gal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na as med­i­cine. I think many peo­ple mis­un­der­stood Propo­si­tion 215, feel­ing that by vot­ing for it they were al­low­ing peo­ple dy­ing from can­cer to have mar­i­jua­na to soothe their pain and in­crease their ap­petites.

"What they got was a law that ba­si­cal­ly says a doc­tor can write a pre­scrip­tion for mar­i­jua­na for any­thing in­clud­ing anx­i­ety, stress, mood­i­ness, or ir­ri­tabil­i­ty. The biggest prob­lem with the law, as I see it, is that the per­cep­tion of mar­i­jua­na's dan­ger has gone way down. Teenagers tell me that it's med­i­cine, not a prob­lem."The com­mis­sion­ers should have paid at­ten­tion to SPECT stud­ies. SPECT means Sin­gle Pho­ton Emis­sion Com­put­ed To­mog­ra­phy. This rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy mea­sures cere­bral blood flow and meta­bol­ic ac­tiv­i­ty pat­terns.

SPECT stud­ies show that "in­ex­pe­ri­enced mar­i­jua­na smok­ers had an acute de­crease in cere­bral blood flow and that chron­ic mar­i­jua­na users had over­all de­creased per­fu­sion when com­pared to a non-us­ing con­trol group." Mem­o­ry and mo­ti­va­tion prob­lems have al­ready been as­so­ci­at­ed with mar­i­jua­na us­age.

Hel­lo there, let us get it right. Some­times, rec­om­mend­ed so­lu­tions can cause more dam­age, es­pe­cial­ly when based on "crude" in­for­ma­tion. We have too many gang fights and drug deal­ing in our schools and streets. We have too many al­co­holic fa­thers who abuse and kill their wives. We have too many chil­dren who have poor role mod­els at home. We have too many girls who are not pre­pared for moth­er­hood and aban­don their chil­dren.Let us make de­ci­sions based on fact, not fic­tion.